Search Unity

  1. Megacity Metro Demo now available. Download now.
    Dismiss Notice
  2. Unity support for visionOS is now available. Learn more in our blog post.
    Dismiss Notice

Unity on a beaglebone black?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by techmage, Sep 24, 2013.

  1. techmage

    techmage

    Joined:
    Oct 31, 2009
    Posts:
    2,133
    So anyone seen this thing? http://beagleboard.org/Products/BeagleBone Black

    It's basically TI's way of competing with the raspberry pi. But it's cpu is faster than a pi, has a NEON coprocessor, has a PowerVR SGX530 on it, 2GB built in storage, and has official android jellybean support which I understand works and is stable. Which to me those are all the pre-requisites to run a Unity game on it. It's only $45 and based on those stats I presume about as powerful as an iPhone 4.

    Has anyone played with one of these things and actually gotten a Unity game running on it?


    I've been looking into running a Unity game on a raspberry pi, but it's android support is unofficial, old, and have only read bad reports about android on the pi. Which is unforunate, this article says the pi actually has a way faster GPU than the beaglebone black http://makezine.com/magazine/how-to-choose-the-right-platform-raspberry-pi-or-beaglebone-black/ but that seems kind of weird to me? I would not expect the VideoCore IV to be faster than the Power SGX530.

    Has anyone gotten Unity to run on either of these devices?
     
  2. mokko6

    mokko6

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2012
    Posts:
    88
    Suprising that the BeagleBone works with Android. With 2GB there's not much space for anything other than the OS. The GPU is also outdated. The PowerVR SGX530 GPU came out in 2004/2005, the VideoCore IV used in Raspberry Pi in 2009/2010.
     
  3. techmage

    techmage

    Joined:
    Oct 31, 2009
    Posts:
    2,133
    Well the raspberry pi is armv6 so Unity can't even build for it....

    This is really an unfortunate mix. The pi has the GPU, but lacks the CPU and android support.

    The beaglebone black has the CPU and the android support but lacks the GPU.

    I've been looking around incessantly trying to figure out how you can set the GPU/CPU split in the RAM on the beaglebone but don't see anything, I'm really hoping that doesn't mean the beaglebone black GPU doesn't share the main system RAM and thus has an extremely small and unusable amount of VRAM.

    But none the less I've ordered a beaglebone black. Also have a raspberry pi, I also just ordered an udoo quad. My company has put me on trying to figure out the perfect embedded system to place inside a kiosk that can ideally run Unity. So I should have some interesting things to report back about this in a few months.

    If anyone knows of any small single PCB board computer than can run Unity. Ideally control DMX lighting signals and hook up to an LCD through an LVDS cable. OR... just run unity. Lemme know, I will purchase one and investigate it.
     
    Last edited: Sep 28, 2013
  4. JohnnyA

    JohnnyA

    Joined:
    Apr 9, 2010
    Posts:
    5,041
    I've got nothing useful to add but that sounds like a great project.
     
  5. mokko6

    mokko6

    Joined:
    Nov 21, 2012
    Posts:
    88
    Unity 3.x builds to ARMv6.

    Gumstix might be worth a look.
     
  6. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

    Joined:
    Dec 29, 2011
    Posts:
    15,614
    Have you considered buying OUYA's and just using the internals?
     
  7. techmage

    techmage

    Joined:
    Oct 31, 2009
    Posts:
    2,133
    that right there is not a bad idea at all....

    the only hang up with that though is that its really important the hardware can interface with a touchscreen, and ideally an LCD panel through LVDS.

    I'm thinking the udoo quad might turn out to be the perfect solution for this kind of thing.
     
  8. techmage

    techmage

    Joined:
    Oct 31, 2009
    Posts:
    2,133
    So I thought I'd write back and say, I got Unity running on a beagle bone black and the udoo quad. However the performance is very very bad. Which I was expecting the udoo quad to be comparable to the iPad 2 at least, but it's not. It's really bad, maybe comparable to the iPhone 3GS. I don't know why, I suspect these mini computers just don't have the android build highly optimized for their GPU.
     
  9. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

    Joined:
    Dec 29, 2011
    Posts:
    15,614
    I'd expect a hardware issue more than a software issue. Bandwidth bottlenecks or something like that. It doesn't matter how fast your GPU is if it can't get data fast enough, for instance.

    Cool to know that it worked, though!
     
  10. saintphilip

    saintphilip

    Joined:
    Jan 12, 2014
    Posts:
    1
    I'm brand new here but hope you're still paying attention to this thread.

    Do you think the BeagleBone Black would be able to handle a 2d Unity game with 16-bit era graphics; e.g., 320 x 240, 4000 colors on screen, 200 sprites, etc?

    Thanks in advance and happy to be here.

    Phil
     
  11. tylosaurusness

    tylosaurusness

    Joined:
    Sep 11, 2013
    Posts:
    1
    techmage: have you re-approached this recently? I'm hoping this will work on the RPi 2
     
  12. Ostwind

    Ostwind

    Joined:
    Mar 22, 2011
    Posts:
    2,804
    Unity stuff work with Windows IoT for RPi2 but that's about it as the performance is poor.
     
  13. joe.davis

    joe.davis

    Joined:
    Apr 17, 2012
    Posts:
    14
    > My company has put me on trying to figure out the perfect embedded system to place inside a kiosk that can ideally run Unity
    Depending on the price you are willing to spend per-board, there are some more expensive options that might be a better fit.

    The recent Cubieboards should be fast enough. Their website isn't very easy to navigate. I'd recommend starting here: http://docs.cubieboard.org/products/start

    HardKernel's ODROID boards are another option: http://www.hardkernel.com/main/main.php

    I've ran Unity games on AllWinner A80 based devices before (Onda V989) and it's pretty fast. The same chip is used in the Cubieboard 4.
     
    bugmagnet likes this.